Writings

The Going: A Meditation on Jewish Law

Winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in the area of Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice

In a work that casts philosophical and theological reflections against a backdrop of personal experience, Leon Wiener Dow offers a learned discourse that elucidates the telos of Jewish law and the philosophical-theological commitments that animate it. To the reader gazing upon the halakha from the outside, The Going offers a glimpse of its central, orienting concepts, as well as of the inner workings of the phenomenon of the halakha. To the reader who lives amidst the rigor of halakha, steeped in its praxis, the book bestows an insightful glance at the law’s orienting ethos and higher aspirations that often remain opaque.

REVIEWS

The Going is a highly original theological work offering many new insights and potential for future avenues of halakhic thought.

Alan Brill,

Seton Hall University

The Going represents an innovative force in Jewish literature. ... Leon Wiener-Dow's writing brings to the fore a fresh voice that is bound to influence the conversations of Jews around the world.

Judges,

2018 National Jewish Book Award in Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice

A truly dazzling achievement, Wiener Dow’s The Going will open your heart and expand your mind. Lyrical and wise, this book’s grace and depth makes you want to savor it slowly.

Bradley Shavit Artson,

Dean, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, American Jewish University

Grounded in the particularity of his life journey towards, through, and within Jewish tradition, Leon Wiener Dow weaves bright threads of the Jewish tradition with lived experience to produce a 21st century vision of Jewish community. The pages of this book pulsate with the vital urgency of one who knows that every private encounter with the Divine demands nothing less than the always risky but ever invigorating commitment to community and the life of action.

Christine Hayes,

Yale University, author of What’s Divine About Divine Law?

Following in the footsteps of his great teacher David Hartman, Wiener Dow brings together into shared conversation the dominant voices in modern Jewish philosophy, rabbinic thinkers, and today’s Jew, whose intimate struggles negotiate the tensions between tradition and the contemporary world.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin,

Former President Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School

At once lyrical, lucid, and moving, The Going has much to teach both those interested in what it might mean to live an observant, committed Jewish life as well as anyone concerned with the question of how to live today in a world seemingly replete with endless choices.

Leora Batnitzky,

Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and Chair of Department of Religion at Princeton University, author of How Judaism Became a Religion

In this remarkably intimate account of his own religious journey, Wiener Dow draws on his vast reservoir of philosophical and rabbinic knowledge to offer a novel and compelling approach to Torah. Wiener Dow addresses the mind while also touching the soul of those who seek the Divine.

David Ellenson,

Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University and Chancellor Emeritus and former President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

In this powerful, haunting, exhilarating volume, Leon Wiener Dow bravely explores the halakha from the inside out, and the outside in. He brings into the halakhic conversation arresting new readings of what this ever-changing and so often vexed system can and perhaps must be. Like the halakha, his book challenges us to think hard about our lives and to and act with conviction.

Yehudah Mirsky,

Brandeis University, author, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution

In this beautiful new book that cuts across genres, Leon Wiener Dow brings together a keen philosophical sensibility, a phenomenological eye, and a manifest love of traditional Jewish sources. Weaving these strands together, he produces something both rare and precious: a book informed by academic Jewish studies whose beating religious heart can be felt on every page.

Rabbi Shai Held, Ph.D.,

President and Dean, Mechon Hadar; author of The Heart of Torah: Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion